Dear Reps,
The Council wants to clarify the situation with what we have called “Community Midterm plans”, the Reps Program and Council involvement in them.
- The Council does not approve all the plans of regional communities. All communities are empowered to plan well in advance and the only approval needed from the Council is for any budget that comes through the Mozilla Reps program.
- However, Council can always help Reps to guide local communities by providing context to shape their plans. Regional Coaches initiative aims to help here.
- The “midterm planning” experiment was started last year with the Indonesian community.
- Unexpected changes within Mozilla (Firefox OS) made the planning the way we had envisioned it not ideal and outdated quickly.
- The council thinks that it will remain very difficult in the current experimentation state to have a single plan without changes and iterations for 6 months for a whole community.
- In order to have greater impact the Council recommends a more iterative plan and based on initiatives.
- Furthermore the Council recommends regular checks and follow ups to the project status, so the plan is always adapted to the current reality and time frames, avoiding frustrations.
- The Council still thinks that planning in advance is extremely helpful for communities:
- It allows everyone to get on the same page earlier
- It allows to build relationships locally and regionally in a reliable way.
- It allows to be much more careful with resources.
I hope this clarifies the position of the Council. Feel free to send us any questions here or directly to the Reps alias.
Thanks!
–
Ruben on behalf of the Reps Council.